Hello, everyon I’m using obsidian sync. Happy with it, except this usecase.
What I’m trying to do
Restructuring and simplification of my vault is a steady process. When I’m changing the name of folder on my private laptop this will cause that on my mobile and work laptop all files in this folder will be deleted and a new folder created where all files get downloaded. Not only does during that time syncing of notes not work because the devices is busy deleting and downloading all those files it also changes the sorting of “last updated files”
It gets pretty annoying the higher the folder in my vault is because more sub-folders and files are affected.
###My Goal
Renaming a folder would rename this folder cross my devices without deleting and downloading the files from old to (new) renamed folder
Is this a bug or a feature and what is the best way to handle this?
I believe its more of a feature than a bug, since it sounds very normal to expect that kind of behavior when changing top level folders.
Not sure if there any good actions to mitigate the issue other than allowing the sync process to take its time. Three related thoughts do however come to mind:
Temporarily turn off sync if you know you’re going to major changes. This would stop the sync process from doing intermediate syncing of half done file and folder structures
Don’t rely on the last updated timestamps on the file, as they’re print to change with sync&backup processes. Rather use Linter or similar plugins to add the updated timestamps into the properties of the file. (Similarly one could consider to move the title of the file/folder into the properties, which would allow for the actual file/folder to be constant, but then again you’d need to add some system to view your titles instead of the file system name)
Turn of sync, and do the changes manually on all devices. I’ve in similar cases turned off the synchronisation, and rather done the changes manually. In some cases this could reduce the synchronisation bandwidth usage, since some sync tools could recognise that the file structure has changed but they’re “identical” when you turn the sync on again. Not sure if this would work for Obsidian sync though, and it has mostly proven useful when I could use a script to change the file structure.
Please don’t attempt this one without making a safe backup copy first. I don’t recommend trying this one at all.
As I understand, Obsidian Sync works on timestamps and will likely sync both ways and you’ll risk the chance of clobbering files. I might be wrong. But if you insist on trying, please backup first.
Thanks for the hint. What I did was to let Chatgpt write me a script that takes from each note’s properties the last edit and creation date out and writes it into the timestamp of the files.
Works beautifully and finally I see my latest notes perfectly ordered in obsidian.
To be honest, I love obsidian’s vision to give me back control of my notes and the power to adjusted it to my needs. But if you like to attract the day to day user these are details that matter.
Whenever I rename a folder on onedrive or in similar tools like Evernote it just syncs the name change - without deleting and downloading all files. I’m happy paying for sync and I’d like not to think about workarounds when deciding to rename a folder.
Please @obsidian team have a look if this is something you like to improve.